Ask MRN: Can I find Fritos to go with my taco tip and chili for my Super Bowl party?

Dear Muddy River News: Can I get Fritos to go with my taco dip and chili for my Super Bowl party? I’ve heard there’s a national shortage.

If you’re headed to the grocery store this weekend, the short answer is yes. You should have plenty of Fritos available in Quincy to snack on during Sunday’s game.

However, had you asked the same question in December, the answer would likely have been, “Good luck finding them.”

At the start of the pandemic, the Food Industry Association reported consumer demand for groceries jumped 50 percent almost overnight to unprecedented levels as consumers embraced the idea of cooking their own meals at home. This surge of demand strained the supply chain and caused shortages of household staples throughout the country.

Thanks to lockdowns, bouts of illness and a lack of adequate working conditions, factories and delivery mechanisms have been severely understaffed as of late. Combine those factors along with rising gas prices and increased demand thanks to COVID habits, and serious problems in the shipping industry were created in late 2021.

In-demand products are often sitting idly in warehouses because there aren’t enough truck drivers to distribute food throughout the country, resulting in some shortages on store shelves.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the depths of the pandemic, the truck transportation industry lost 6 percent of its 1.52 million workers. Per the American Trucking Association, the industry is facing a shortage of 80,000 drivers, an all-time high.

Fritos, the popular corn chip made by Frito-Lay, were not easy to find during the holidays.

“December was a terrible month for Fritos,” said Larry Snelling, a category buyer for Niemann Foods in Quincy. “December usually is a high velocity month for Fritos, because people like to make chili and they’ll substitute Fritos or Scoops (the larger brand of Fritos chips)

“A couple of the issues that Frito-Lay has had are the same as any other vendor that’s out there. One of them was raw materials. They had a hard time finding the film that they bag everything in. Another issue was staffing. That’s one of the things that we’re running into with multiple vendors that we we have in our stores.”

Snelling, who worked for Frito-Lay for 23 years before taking his position three years ago with Niemann Foods, said the December problems with Fritos bled over into January.

“Probably about midway through January is when we started seeing product come back on the shelves,” Snelling said. “I did reach out to our local distribution center in Springfield. (As of Tuesday) they have 900 cases of Fritos, but each route is limited to five cases per order per store, which would equate to 50 bags.

“We don’t have any store selling 50 bags of Fritos per day, so you should have plenty of Fritos available. They should be good to go.”

Quincy survived a shortage of toilet paper when the pandemic started. Now it appears we’ve survived the Great Fritos Shortage as well.